Young Pip, an orphan, is working as a blacksmith when he learns that an unknown person has willed him a fortune. He is sent to London to be educated as a rich gentleman.

"For two thousand years, the epic tale of Aeneas's dramatic flight from Troy, his doomed love affair with Dido, his descent into the underworld, and the bloody story behind the establishment of Rome has electrified audiences around the world. In Vergil's telling, Aeneas's heroic journey not only gave Romans and Italians a thrilling origin story, it established many of the fundamental themes of Western life and literature-the role of duty and self-sacrifice,...

The Divine Comedy begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. The poem traces the narrator's journey through the afterlife -- visiting first hell, then purgatory, and then paradise -- and presents an imaginative vision of the afterlife that provides great insight into the medieval Catholic worldview.

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas' epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it...